Hannity’s Racial Obsession With Obama

Sean Hannity spent – count ‘em! – three different segments on Hannity last night obsessing about the subject of President Obama and race. While it’s easy to dismiss this as a grasp at straws, when you consider this was the night after Mitt Romney’s decisive win in the first presidential debate and when you consider it in the context of Hannity’s own very disturbing history of palling around with bigots, a troubling picture emerges.

Hannity began the show with a big get: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. And he surely knew he’d make big news with Romney’s “I was completely wrong” reversal on his 47% remarks. So you’d expect Hannity to take more of a debate victory lap or spend more time talking impeachment over Benghazi-gate rather than turn to a “new” 10 year-old video in order to dredge up the subject of Obama and race fortheumpteenthtime.

Race Segment 1: Hannity played inflammatory soundbites of a 2002 Obama speech gave on Martin Luther King Day. By the way, Hannity seems to make a special point of finding African Americans to attackonMLKDay. Last night’s guest, Michael Meyers, reprisedhisrole as one of the Hannity show's African American black attackers.

“I’m a liberal Democrat,” Meyers laughably said. “The point here is that we know what (Obama) is… He revealed himself (as) the race man that he is. You see he focuses everything about race… You know who he sounds like? Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”

Race Segment 2: Hannity invited on Brent Bozell, the “media bias” whiner from the conservative Media Research Center. This time, Hannity played the race card by accusing the “so-called journalists” in the liberal media of being the real racists. Why? Because they were unimpressed with his big “bombshell” of a 2007 race video – the same one that Fox News covered five years ago. Well, maybe he was just smarting because it didn’t get anywhere near the attention he thought it deserved.

Race Segment 3: Hannity continued accusing other networks of “playing the race card.” In a moment of unintentional hilarity, Bozell argued there’s no evidence that the race card has been played against Obama and added, “They just simply throw this bucket of mud all over the Republican party.”

Brent Bozell lost whatever credibility he thought he had when he lost a defamation lawsuit filed by the WWE after his PTC posted libelous and slanderous materials accusing Wrestling of causing children to hurt each other. (Or something along those lines) The result was a settlement where Bozell was forced to pay millions to the WWE and post a humiliating retraction and apology on the front pages of his websites. Any time Bozell is trotted out as an expert on anything, that citation is useful to turn him back.

I was expecting the Fox victory lap, particularly from Hannity. (It was interesting to hear Greta say that she thought Republicans were cautiously smiling and being optimistic – which was completely belied by the happy trumpeting coming from Limbaugh, O’Reilly and her own guest Dick Morris.)

Tonight, who wants to bet that the evening slate spends much of its time trying to debunk the jobs report that shows the unemployment rate below 8 percent? They seem to be spending their time trying to talk down that report while talking up the expected Rasmussen poll showing Romney in great shape after the debate. The real aggregate of polls will hit by next Monday – most likely showing Romney doing better but still significantly behind in the key states. Five Thirty Eight’s summation of the race is more or less unchanged. Romney did well in the first debate, almost completely due to Obama not challenging him on multiple factual problems. I seriously doubt that situation will recur. Hannity and Fox should enjoy their victory lap now, but I’d caution them on celebrating too noisily. In one month, they may be singing a very different song.